Outreach and Co-Curation:
Engaging with Library Users
Assoc. Prof. Axel Bruns
ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation
Queensland University of Technology
a.bruns@qut.edu.au – http://snurb.info/ – @snurb_dot_info
Social Media
• Working definition:
– Websites which build on Web 2.0 technologies to
provide space for in-depth social interaction,
community formation, and the tackling of collaborative
projects.
 Social media = Web 2.0 technologies + Community
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Image by barjack
Threat or Opportunity?
• Threats?
– explosion in content creation
• new sources of quality content (e.g. blogs, wikis)
– competing knowledge structures
• self-organising knowledge communities
• Opportunities?
– explosion in collaborative metadata generation
• everyday ‘coolfinding’ (Mark Pesce) points to quality content
– self-organising knowledge communities
• rapid prototyping of new knowledge structures
Image by XKCD
Beyond Content Production
• Decline of traditional roles in the value chain:
producer  distributor  consumer
• Decline of stable content forms and formats
Image by
spierzchala
Image by zota
Anyone Can Write, Edit, Publish, …
(as producer)
content
produser
(as user)
this is produsage
content
(http://www.research.ibm.com/visual/projects/history_flow/capitalism1.htm)
Key Principles
• Shared across collaborative social media environments:
– Open Participation, Communal Evaluation:
the community as a whole, if sufficiently large and varied, can contribute more
than a closed team of producers, however qualified
– Fluid Heterarchy, Ad Hoc Meritocracy:
produsers participate as is appropriate to their personal skills, interests, and
knowledges; this changes as the produsage project proceeds
– Unfinished Artefacts, Continuing Process:
content artefacts in produsage projects are continually under development, and
therefore always unfinished; their development follows evolutionary, iterative,
palimpsestic paths
– Common Property, Individual Merit:
contributors permit (non-commercial) community use of their intellectual property,
and are rewarded by the status capital
Image by B Rosen
Opportunities for Libraries: Outreach
• Outreach:
– Use social media for updates – viral marketing
– Build loyal communities around library activities
– Build digital / social media / produsage literacies
– Encourage users to become content creators
• Smart Services CRC Social Media Reports:
1 – State of the Art
(http://snurb.info/socialmedia-vol1)
2 – User Engagement Strategies
(http://snurb.info/socialmedia-vol2)
Building Communities
• Communities are concentric:
Marginal members
General members
Community leaders
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Success in Social Media
• Engaging with produsage communities:
1. Be open.
For users (access) and with users (transparency).
2. Seed community processes by providing content and tools.
Model desired behaviour, assist productive participation.
3. Support community dynamics and devolve responsibilities.
Engage promising community leaders as they emerge.
4. Don’t exploit the community and its work.
Utilising their contributions is fine, but you don’t own your users.
Image by Maproom Systems
Opportunities for Libraries?
• Co-Curation:
– Harness users to identify community interests
– Collaborate with users who are enthusiasts for
specific topics
– Track new developments across areas of interest
– Work with users to curate produsage content
– Librarian expertise as added value for produsage
content
– Encourage community leaders to pursue professional
careers
(http://delicious.com/url/f2b8a68f6b131de40634dd94e3065cf6)
Folksonomies
Golder & Huberman, 2005
Evaluating Folksonomies
Visualisations of individual users’ del.icio.us tagging patterns, by Kunal Anand
National Library + Flickr = Re-Picture Australia
Image by KingDaveRa
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Image by mike.in.ny
Growing the Community
• Encouraging constructive participation:
status
leaders
marginal members
number of members
Harness Community
• Community knowledge is key:
– Enthusiasts help cover
those areas which ‘real’
experts miss
– Human knowledge too
broad and diverse to rely
on specialists alone
• Towards a creative economy:
– Need staff skilled in cocurating and adding value
to produsage content
– Opportunity for enthusiasts
to develop professional
careers
Image by greenpeace.italia
Viral Marketing
Axel Bruns
Associate Professor
ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and
Innovation
Creative Industries Faculty
Queensland University of Technology
Brisbane, Australia
Email:
a.bruns@qut.edu.au
Blog:
Twitter:
Produsage:
LinkedIn:
http://snurb.info/
@snurb_dot_info
http://produsage.org/
http://www.linkedin.com/in/snurb
Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond:
From Production to Produsage (Peter Lang, 2008)